The country can earn heavy foreign exchange by creating awareness about Intellectual Property Rights that will help flourish businesses and economic activities in the country.

The country can earn heavy foreign exchange by creating awareness about Intellectual Property Rights that will help flourish businesses and economic activities in the country. It was echoed at one-day seminar on Intellectual Property Rights organized by Office of Research, Innovation and Commercialization (ORIC), University of Agriculture Faisalabad in collaboration with Intellectual Property Organization (IPO) Islamabad. Presiding over the session, UAF Vice Chancellor Dr Muhammad Iqbal Zafar said that research is vital to bring changes in the lives of the people. He added that there is a need to think out of box and come up with innovative ideas to address the issues confronting the society. He called for building knowledge based economy coupled with strong academia-industry linkages to cope with challenges including unemployment, poverty, food security and economical church. He said that people don’t get IPR of their ideas, products etc, providing room for copiers to squeeze the business of original ideas generators. He said enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights can encourage investment, establishment of industries and creation of new job opportunities. He said research findings are not to be confined and restricted to research thesis or research articles to be kept in the libraries, these must be translated into goods and services for the benefit of the society at large. ORIC Director Dr Zahir Ahmad Zahir said that the UAF has established a research culture at the campus and research funding from diversified sources is more than 2.6 billion where one third is of international funding and one third sponsored by HEC. He said that university is not only facilitating researchers for filing of patents but also supporting them in terms of finances under the framework of the HEC, resultantly there are 7 patents on the credit of the university while 15 are in the different stages of approval. IPO Pakistan Assistant Director Zahoor Ahmad talked about patent, industrial design, trademark and copyright. He said the people are losing billions of rupees due to unaware of IPR in the country. He said that there is a need to tell the people about the importance of the IPR that will help flourish the businesses. Dr Khurrum Zia said that under the umbrella of Business Incubation Center, 27 incubate companies are in place at UAF whereas 24 out of them have been graduated with No. of startups. He urged the participants to get the knowledge of IPR and to play thier role in creating the awareness about the issue